Census Fun Among the Books

As I made my way towards the museum yesterday I came upon a thousand schoolchildren plus teachers heading my way.  These it appeared were happy excited kids going into the museum for a day of fun and learning, I joined them much worrying for the teacher in front who had not realised I was working there.  
Soon after they had trooped through the door a woman followed with a query re her house.  She wanted to know its history, people etc, and foolishly I offered to search for her after showing several sites she needs to investigate.  This has left me with a few hours of staring at maps, census returns which provided some answers, searching through books was less successful but one answer did arise.  It appears the web is better than books at some things.

This followed on from a similar check on some info given re a dead soldier, I had failed to realise there were ten children in his family not eight, I would suggest his mother knew how many there were right enough.  Another census check, another ''Ancestry' search, and another amendment to the site.
It never fails to amaze me how many people look for dead soldiers.  Whether out of interest, family research, military interest or just simply wandering what it is all about I every so often get comments, requests or interesting info on the men who marched away.  I find them more interesting than those around me.  One thing becomes more clear, they are no different to those around me,  culture changes but human nature does not, in fact I am convinced now that meeting the grandsons and great grandsons of men who died gives a decent idea of what kind of men they were, this I am sorry to say is not always pleasant.  These 'heroes,' these 'brave boys,' were men just like the rest, if only we regarded them as such instead of cutting them down to our image.

 
There is a lot of talk about Pankhurst's terrorist women these days, I wonder if it is possible to chain today's version to railings throughout the nation, for the good of the nation...?

Much fuss has been made today re 'Cheddar Man,'  Apparently this chap, who died around 10,000 years ago, is thought to have been kind of black.   "This is what Britons looked like just after the last ice age," is what is sort of said.  Hmmm.  An examination along with professional guesswork reaches this conclusion, this of course may be right, and this may indicate that living in the cold north we lost our pigmentation and became white.  However some indicate the chap fund in the Alps dating to 5000 BC was indeed white, unless they will soon discover different, and it is doubtful pigmentation would change so soon.
There are so many intelligent guesses in such work.  Conclusions on limited and often difficult evidence may lead to thoughtful and possibly correct understandings but on the other hand may be wildly erroneous.  For myself I would love it to be true that the members of the 'English Defence League' are indeed descended from an African.  The UKIP faction stopping foreign Joghnny's at the border may be better asking "Are you my long lost brother?"  I doubt they will however and the 'Daily Mail' reader is having a fit as he reads.   
We are after all 'All Jock Tamson's bairns.